


Who Can Retell the Things that Befell? [or, Naked Came the Spaceman]

by jer832



Series: (Holidays) If Time has no straight lines, history must be a gag reel [4]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alien Biology, Ancient History, F/M, Gen, Historical Characters - Freeform, Historical References, Humor, Mild Sexual Content, Sexual Humor, Snark, snark as foreplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 04:51:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2953010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jer832/pseuds/jer832
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A familiar gut-twisting, nausea-raising, throat-tightening sense of impending doom suddenly filled her. Rolling her eyes, Donna left the viewing audience and tried to keep up with the naked Time Lord.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Can Retell the Things that Befell? [or, Naked Came the Spaceman]

**Author's Note:**

> This standalone story is the latest in my Holiday series, which includes ["My Funny Valentine"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1167043)    ['When Gallifreyan Eyes are Smiling',   ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1167105?view_full_work=true) and ['Let My Doctor Go'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1167640)  The action takes place after LMDG,
> 
> This story will make a lot more sense if the reader has read 'Gallifreyan Eyes', in which Donna learns how to shag her alien. But, in a nutshell: 
> 
> 1\. The Doctor and Donna are lovers, though at first they had some bumps in the road (an a few other spots) getting there, because of the Time Lord's Gallifreyan physiology.
> 
> 2\. As for the Doctor's physiology: Evolution has stored most of the Gallifreyan male's member inside his body, protected until he is ready to use it. A ring of testicular tissue surrounds the penis and functions much like the scrotum of a human male; in the un-aroused Gallifreyan male it looks and feels like a disc of dense tissue covered by the sensitive skin of the groin. When they shag, the male's engorged ring makes contact with the perimeter of the female's vagina and labia, (comprising her clitoral bulb) which respond basically the same way as the clit of a human female. The mechanics of intercourse are basically the same for humans and Gallifreyans, but the interaction of the male's testicular ring and the female's clitoral bulb help effect one hell of an orgasm.
> 
> The title is an homage to Naked Came the Stranger by Penelope Ashe, but there was only one me writing.

 

  _Who_ Can Retell the Things That Befell?  [or, Naked Came the Spaceman]

 

   

Donna was thirsty. She was hot. She was bone-weary. She was worried. Mostly she was PO'ed. It was no contest of course, PO'ed always won hands-down when she was with that mad alien. Or not with him, as the case seemed once again to be.

Stupid Holiday cookies.

All she'd wanted when she'd bought them was something sweet with her tea. But he'd ripped open the box and picked out the biggest, most heavily frosted, most candy-coated, most hyper-activity-inducing six-pointed star and decapitated one of its equilateral triangles. _Happy Hanukkah, Donna Noble_ , he said, spraying a tiny avalanche of crumbs across the table. He licked some frosting off the top of the cookie, grinned happily, then set his mind and mouth to strategically murdering the remaining one and two-thirds equilateral triangles of the star before he attacked a dreidel.

When the Doctor stopped to worry his tongue along a big smudge of frosting on his cheek, Donna watched spellbound. As his tongue followed the trail of buttercream glop from the left corner of his mouth, over his cheek, past his left dimple— _way_ past his left dimple— she gave serious thought to licking the stuff off his face herself. Then she started thinking about that impressive tongue and other sweet licking experiences the Doctor and she had shared and could share/would share/will have shared ( _Lord love a time machine_ Donna thought, crossing her legs and blushing just a bit).

As the Doctor chomped and licked his way through the box of cookies, he lectured Donna about proper Hanukkah traditions, regaling her with facts from the deep and scary recesses of his impressive brain and spraying her with more bits and crumbs of sugar cookie, Donna wondered aloud how he could talk and eat and still remember to breathe. The Time Lord gave her fifteen minutes on non-sexual uses for his respiratory bypass.

Then returning to the subject at hand, which was still being shovelled in with great delight and causing little sugary windstorms over the table, the Doctor informed her that the correct, that is to say historically accurate and now commonly accepted indulgence for the holiday was a fried piece of puffed dough stuffed with jelly. (But would he give her one buttery six-pointed pretender to the throne of classic celebratory icon for her cooling tea… or a nine-branched menorah with yellow frosting candlelight… or even a simple dreidel? No of course not.).

"The _only_ way to savour the sweet and greasy flavour of this _brrr-illiant_ little pastry, Donna," he continued as he continued emptying her box of cookies into his gob, "is not to bite her as so many humans tend to do. The rush to get willy-nilly, or nilly-willy, into her treasure only makes an oozing albeit tasty mess of things —"

(Though not human, the Doctor was himself truly expert at making a mess of things.)

"—Oh, no, Donna Noble; she is a tasty and willing vessel and one should take the temptress with the respect she deserves: embrace her with great delight and nibble at her tender flesh, find the hidden notch in her swollen walls and lick and suck lightly at the tempting little opening, coax out the sweetness in her core, dipping and teasing and tasting her treasure with a gentle but determined tongue, then eat your fill of her."

The Doctor smiled at Donna and licked his fingers clean

E. T. the Extraterrestrial-Twat was doing it on purpose, Donna knew. Still, it didn't stop her mind from going there—yes _there_ , so sue her!—and perhaps she missed a bit of the rest of his lecture, beyond the dancing of his talented tongue, the pulling deep inside her own willing core and the oft-repeated word, _sufganiyot_.

"Is that Gallifreyan for jelly donut?"

"No, Donna,"— another cookie; another bite; another lick, another surreal stretch of that ADHD tongue— "not jelly donut. _Sufganiyot_."

"Is that even a word, Spaceman?"

"Of course it's a word! I am dismayed and shocked that you would even consider that I—"

"Yeah, yeah. So what's the difference between a _sufganiyot_ and a jelly donut?"

The Doctor took that as a challenge. He also took what was left in the box of cookies and the box, and whilst he piloted the TARDIS to their destination on a sugar high and fourteen choruses of "I Have a Little Dreidel", Donna had had to settle for leftover biscuits with her warmed-over tea.

~

The Doctor landed the TARDIS in a business district in Israel's capital city. Maybe. It was supposed to be Jerusalem, but it looked more like a set from the beginning of the Kevin Costner version of _'Robin Hood'_. If this was modern Jerusalem it was in denial. Stone houses lined narrow dirt streets. A cast of thousands crowded just everywhere, calling noisily for a parade to start. She could see a giant Mediaeval-looking stone edifice at the top of a nearby hill, where the starting line looked to be. The smell of sweat and goats and burned barbecue permeated the air. None of the squat buildings had large glass windows or fancy doors, or decent doors. And not one of those thousands of revellers was wearing anything that even remotely looked like an Isaac Mizrahi design.

(While the Doctor leaned against the TARDIS soaking up the possibly alien atmosphere, Donna compared her attire with that of the women along the street. Except for being brand new and clean, she wore a fairly good approximation of what she saw. She'd once asked the Doctor how come he never knew where-when they'd ended up until he opened the doors—and sometimes not even then—but the TARDIS always knew what clothes to set out for her in the wardrobe before they landed. His answer was twenty minutes of Time Lord babble. She could tell a con job when it bored her to tears.)

Almost immediately after they left the TARDIS, the Doctor went 'round the bend—actually, physically, bodily, though Donna was of the opinion, well never mind— They joined the crowd on the not-sidewalk along the narrow, dusty excuse for a street. The Doctor joined in the calls for the parade to commence and chatted with the people. Suddenly he licked a residue subatomic piece of cookie frosting off his top lip, grinned and turned to her. "Donna Noble, when are sufganiyot not sufganiyot?" _Snigger snigger._ "When someone eats most of them and there's only one sufganiyah left." Before she could ask him WTF that was supposed to mean, he took off in search of a bakery, disappearing around the bend in the street into the next block, leaving Donna standing alone in the hot smelly crowd.

~

The Doctor had told her don't wander off. She'd wandered off, but only on a technicality: it had been over half an hour, the parade had started, and the spacy spaceman still hadn't returned. How many elephants can one woman stand to see and smell up close and personal in the blazing heat? Following the parade route, she walked through the easy-bake oven that was not modern Jerusalem, looking for the city's version of McDonalds or at least, if she was lucky, some place that served something with ice.

"What's the difference between a _sufganiyot_ and a jelly donut," Donna muttered to herself, "Well, Donna Noble," she mimicked, "I'm going to show you." Condescending know-it-all alien twit.

The parade was in full swing now, and Donna got a bit distracted from her fast food quest by the naked athletes passing by at a good healthy jog, followed by a formation of grinning men in matching togas with shields that glinted beneath the strong mid-day sun. She got even more distracted a bit later when the Doctor jogged by, leading a large formation of grinning men on beautiful prancing horses. The riders' tops, wide wristbands, large skullcaps, and boots were made of leather, and they wore matching short white skirts. Their shields and the silver trim on the horses' tack glinted in the intense and dazzling sunlight, as did the sweat running off their well-muscled bodies.

Her skinny alien didn't sweat, but then he didn't have the muscles to enhance the effect. However, the Doctor's eyes and toothy smile glinted, and the TARDIS key glinted on a glinting chain around his neck. Wrist bands that Donna had an uneasy feeling might be manacles glinted. Nothing else glinted. There was nothing else to glint. The Doctor was starkers. A familiar gut-twisting, nausea-raising, throat-tightening sense of impending doom suddenly filled her. Rolling her eyes, Donna left the viewing audience and tried to keep up with the naked Time Lord.

~

Donna squatted against the side of a building not paying too much attention to the naked runners, the bareback (and front) riders, the Important Men in chariots, the semi-important spear-and-shield-bearing warrior-types on horses and elephants who followed them, a bunch of big deal politicians (one can always tell) and a final group of naked athletes who brought up their… who ran along behind the Big Deals. She was trying to concoct a plan to get to the Doctor. She had absolutely no idea where he'd gotten to, no inkling what was going on or by whom; no idea where to start or who to trust. She knew where and when they'd ended up because she'd asked a street vendor. They were in very, very ancient Israel at a very, very bad time.

"Business as usual," Donna muttered. She wiped her poor sunburned forehead with the back of her hand then let out a pained little sniffle. Traveling with the Doctor was hard on natural redheads and she'd left the sunblock in the TARDIS along with her nail file, lock-pick, and pepper spray.

A shadow loomed on the ground in front of her. Then it loomed closer. Then it loomed over her, and she prepared herself to jump up, belt someone, and run.

Donna looked up into the kind eyes of a nice, well-robed, softly-smiling old man. He handed her a mug of something, and she was so thirsty that by that point she would have downed high tea with her mum and the entire bridge club. She tasted it, decided it was delicious and she was likely not poisoned, and thanked the man.

"I am Mattisyahu son of Yohanan the Kohan, a Hasmonean."

"I'm Donna daughter of Sylvia the N— Umm, Donna Noble."

The man nodded as if he'd been expecting her, which wasn't as weird as it seemed; traveling with the Doctor one got used to it.

"Donna (he pronounced it Dayna), your friend is in trouble," he whispered, and bid her follow him. With a brief disgusted thought that SNAFU must have been coined by one of the Doctor's earlier companions, Donna nodded and followed.

~~

The old man led Donna through the crowds, cutting through the loop of the parade route. Hoping to find the Doctor, Donna's eyes searched the naked athletes, who apparently were doing laps around the neighbourhood. A veritable smorgasbord of hotness passed her, their proud naked olive-skinned bodies glistening with sweat, their nostrils flaring above uninhibited proud grins, their long curls glistening with product and sweat bounding freely around their faces. Magnificent firm legs drove the well-toned bodies along, high-kicking, uninhibited, and powerful. Lovely muscular chests heaved. Delectable arms pumped steadily at their sides, hundreds, maybe thousands, of fisted hands moving in perfect alignment and perfect unison. Scrotums slapped noisily against naked skin like maracas in an X-rated Xavier Cugat movie, and thundering feet kept time with the balls and fists. The men's long penises bobbed and bounded ahead of them, also glistening… firm and full with the rush of blood and adrenalin, erect uncircumcised phalluses proudly bounced and bobbed to the cadence of pounding feet, pounding balls, pumping fists, and the spectators' cheers, _double-time harch_.

That familiar gut-twisting, nausea-raising, throat-tightening sense of impending doom of Donna's suddenly exploded into a full-flown panic. Nowhere in the parade of short muscular well-hung naked swarthy hotness could Donna spot her tall skinny, pale-skinned, balls-impaired, teensy-tiny-tipped alien. Evolution had sought to protect Gallifreyan tackle by internalizing it. Evolution had laughed at looming; but Evolution hadn't counted on the Doctor's bad sense of time-space direction and his love of a good daily razor's edge escape from death. Remembering the grinning cavalry and the Doctor's manacles, Donna knew without doubt that the negligibly-hung visible tip of his magnificent internally-stored, bigger-on-her-inside, huge-when-it-needed-to-be sex organ, and large, discernable send-her-to-heaven-and-keep-her-there orgasm-inducing testicular ring likely had gotten him into more trouble than his huge non-negligible great gob usually did.

~

At a camp hidden away in the hills, a handsome young boy who introduced himself as Shimon son of Mattisyahu, brought Donna a drink that tasted strange but felt great sliding down her parched throat, a plate of smelly cheese and gloppy warm yogurt, and slices of a very tasty flat bread.

Changed out of his priestly robe, Mattisyahu sat down next to Donna, took a cup of the drink from Shimon, and downed it in a gulp.

"I noticed your friend when he ran past the officials. I could see that he, like you, is a stranger to our land." Donna nodded. "Dayna, a person's _nefesh_ , his… spirit that imparts his goodness or his failings, cannot be seen; although the way it leads him to live his life tells us much about him. Physical attributes, though clearly visible, do not describe one's soul. Too often, through no fault of their own, good people are made the object of severe and unprovoked attack."

"That's just like the Doctor; he's a good person—the best I've ever met. He does what right and just, and he's always finding himself in trouble for it."

"Like my people," Elazar son of Mattisyahu nodded. "We only wish to practice our beliefs in peace. We believe all people have the right to live in freedom."

"Exactly like the Doctor," Donna said proudly. "Unfortunately, most of the places we go, that is not a strongly accepted belief, especially among the people in power."

"So; like us, he always finds himself persecuted through no fault of his own," another handsome son supplied. It might have been Yonason son of Mattisyahu.

Mattisyahu seemed to have a lot of handsome sons hanging around. They were fully clothed, which disappointed and intrigued Donna after her morning at the meat market, but it did keep her mind off… things… so she could focus on her problem , that is to say her Doctor… her problem Doctor—the one without visible proof of certain socially and politically acceptable physical attributes. The big question was would these people help her find the Doctor?

"It's not always not his fault, to be honest. Maybe there _is_ a teensy bit of difference between you after all, see?"

"A teensy bit; yes, father saw," another of Mattisyahu's sons, Yehudah or perhaps Yochanan, said. Some others laughed, though their father quickly hushed them.

Donna did a good job of not smirking; they didn't know the half of it, more accurately the seven-eighths, but the truth would call the Time Lord's origin and these blokes' manhood into question. And she needed their help. "Mattisyahu, you said my friend is in serious danger."

"You are wise, Dayna. I believe you knew this already. You saw the athletes running by."

"Hard to miss. Your people were very… out there with their… fun and games."

The old man spat. "You saw nothing that identifies our people, only the traitors who have renounced our religion to play with Greek boys.

"When the Greeks first conquered Judea, we were allowed to practice our religion freely. But that has changed. Antiochus defiles our houses of worship with false gods and unclean sacrifices. We who revere the One Unseen and Unknowable God are made to suffer and His abode in His great Temple is desecrated."

Shimon continued, "Those who wished to adopt their pagan ways have turned against us and our faith, and against the Holy One, Blessed be He. They do everything they can to fit in, no matter the physical pain and spiritual degradation they cause themselves to do so. Others are coerced."

"The Doctor is their prisoner," Yehudah said. "They will hurt him. They will kill him."

"Why?" Donna asked. Though she was fairly certain she knew why, she wanted one of them to bring it up... the subject. "What do they have against him? He hasn't tried to cause a revolt." _Are you sure?_ something inside her argued. _Well, he hasn't had enough time. …Probably. Oh? He wasn't running naked in the games, in manacles. …Ye—eah, there was that._ Blimey, this talking to herself was giving her a splitting headache. The git had got himself into something really bad this time. She didn't know if Gallifreyans practiced circumcision, and that convinced Donna of two things: there was at least one topic he still hadn't gotten around to blathering about; and the external part of his penis looked different enough that the Greeks might think he had been circumcised. If they'd offered him a choice, he would have refused to join the conquerors, and there wasn't enough of him _out there_ to force a change on. And what the hell was he doing going for jelly donuts and ending up being naked anyway?

"They will kill your friend," Yehudah said. He lifted his clothing to expose himself to Donna. "It's a plain as—"

"The nose on his face. I got it."

"Only a man with his foreskin intact is allowed to participate in these games. Circumcision is one of our people's unbreakable covenants with God. Refusal to submit to their doctors' operations is their proof that a man is seditious."

"And your friend looks as if either he'd been circumcised by a near-sighted _mohel_ –no offense—"

"None taken."

"—or he is making a statement that nothing can get him to undo the covenant."

"Yeah, I figured it was something like that. I have to rescue him."

Mattisyahu nodded. "Of course, and then end the Greek obscenity in Judea."

"Our people have been waiting for you, Dayna," Yehudah said.

"What do you think I can do?"

"You will lead us to overthrow our conquerors and retake the Temple."

"Overthrow the Greek army?"

"And the Syrians."

"Can't forget the Syrians," Donna mumbled. "You want to overthrow a giant highly trained army with weapons and horses and chariots and elephants. Even if you had a chance, by the time they've carried you all and your gear down these steep rocky hills, your own elephants and horses will be too exhausted to take you into battle; and I didn't see anywhere you could hide to regroup."

"We don't have elephants."

"No elephants? What about horses?"

The Hasmoneans had no horses, no elephants, little armour. There were a lot of men willing to fight, but they were spread out in small groups, hidden throughout the hills, and none of them were trained soldiers.

"How do you expect to carry all the stuff you'll need to fight an army, and not be worn out before you start?"

Yehudah looked as if he was going to throw something. No, that was Yochanan. Yehudah scowled and looked at Mattisyahu as if he was about to whinge, _"Daddy, if you get Yochy an elephant, I want one too."_ Donna didn't giggle, but she did begin to wonder what was in the drink.

"We need to rescue the Doctor. He'll help you plan a strategy that will win your freedom. It's what he does and he's really very good at it."

"He will be under guard," Mattisyahu said.

"How long do these parades go on," Donna wanted to know. "If most of the soldiers are taking part, that would be the best time to break the Doctor out."

"The games run for a few days."

"We will attack their compound tomorrow during the afternoon games, when the sun is at its zenith," Yehudah decided. "The soldiers that are not at the games will be lethargic and slow to act. We will keep them busy so that Dayna and Shimon can rescue her Doctor."

"No!" Donna said. "You'll lose people, good people. The Doctor would not want people to die on his behalf. What if you lure the guards up into these hills , maybe send down someone to be a decoy? It's a tough climb and they'll straggle along in small groups, through the steep narrow footpaths. They won't able to ride in battle formation, the way they were showing off in the parade. Groups of your men can hide throughout the area, ready to surprise them when they stop to, you know, catch their breaths and get out of the heat, cajole their elephants and horses into continuing up, take a leak. Shimon and I will break the Doctor out. Then he'll come up with a plan for your people to free themselves."

Mattisyahu and his sons stared at each other in shock. Yehudah grabbed Yochanan they started doing a happy dance. Before Donna could wonder what was in their drinks, the sons of Mattisyahu rushed to Donna, pulled her up, and embraced her. Mattisyahu fell to his knees before her, tears in his eyes. He kissed her hand. "I knew it! You are Dayna, you are the judgment of God."

"We have prayed for a great miracle," Yehudah said. "And you are come at last, the judgment of the Unknowable One on our oppressors. You will lead us to victory. A great miracle will happen here, and I, Yehudah son of Mattisyahu the Hasmonean am the hammer that will wield it."

At that, a cheer rose from the throats of a hundreds of fully clothed men throughout the Hasmonean camp. _Mah-CAH-bee, Mah-CAH-bee, Mah-CAH-bee_

"You're Yehudah frickin' Maccabee?" Donna said, not as surprised as she would have been ten months earlier , "and this is the beginning of the revolt."

Donna watched the Maccabees go off to solidify details of the rescue with a scowl. "Just going for sufganiyot, eh? Not to teach the Maccabees guerrilla warfare. No, of course not. He'd never use me to give history a kick in the arse 'cos that would be mucking about with the time lines which honestly he would never do, being a Time Lord and all, and my saving Moses was honestly just a lucky coincidence, honestly. Ooooh! After I rescue that little putz and his little putz, we're gonna have a good talk about the difference between the TARDIS dropping blind into a coincidence and him having just the subcoscious part of his brain plot the trip."

 ~

They went over the plans one final time and girded themselves. As they went off to rescue the Doctor, the first of many battles that would finally liberate Mattisyahu's people and, from what Donna remembered, kill or drive out a bunch of important Greeks, invent guerrilla fighting, retake the Temple of God, and set the course of freedom of monotheism, Dayna, judgment of God and exasperated companion of the Time Lord, realized she'd completely forgotten to ask the women in the camp about the difference between sufganiyot and jelly donuts.

~

Things were getting desperate. Though their brave little band of 1,000 or so circumcised and fully clothed warriors had gotten safely back to the hills of Judea, the scout (Yonason, son of Mattisyahu, the Hasmonean; Donna was getting good at this) informed Mattisyahu that Antiochus had called off the games and sent the soldiers to search the hills for for them.

"It won't work," whinged Naftali son of Yaakov, the whinger. "We are small and ill-equipped."

Donna didn't want to argue; but the ancient Jews were very careful about cleanliness being next to godliness and she'd seen them praying and washing, praying and bathing, and because some areas of the rocky Judean hills didn't afford enough cover for even a little band of a thousand or so, the occasional praying and peeing. They might be short compared to the Doctor (everyone in this time and place was), but they were neither small nor ill-equipped.

Get a handle on it, Naftali! I mean… look, you've got the upper hand. There aren't as many of you as them, but that's an asset."

"How is that, Dayna?" Amnon non-whinging son of Yaakov, asked.

Donna pulled herself up to her full height and looked at the man. "In two shakes of an elephant's tail, the puppy can do his business five times. So it is written and so shall it be."

"What?"

"Oh. Sorry, wrong movie. You guys are stressing me out here. See, your army is small and lean. You can move your information fast and move your men faster."

"'Sides," she grinned as Mattisyahu readied his band of freedom-fighters; "the Greeks have elephants to hide behind when they need to get their rocks off, but you Maccabees got boulders. This I know. And those blokes are gonna think twice about coming up a narrow pass starkers against your spears."

~

"Donna Noble! What do you mean I should thank you for rescuing me? You were the one who wandered off!"

Donna gave the _Oncoming Storm_ her best _Judgment of God_ look. "You went to get us Israeli jelly donuts, which by the way we were about two thousand years too early for the first batch, and then you disappeared."

The Doctor shrugged. "I ran into my old friend Plato. No relation. Well when I say run, I mean that he was running away from someone he'd disagreed with a little too loudly. And he's really more like an acquaintance. When I'm down and back here I try to stop by and visit him and Ptolemy the Greater." He scratched the back of his neck. "Actually, thinking on it, I'm more friendly with Ptolemy the Greater."

"Ptolemy the greater what?"

"Just Ptolemy the Greater, Plato's pet elephant."

"And Ptolemy the Lesser?"

The Doctor pulled at his earlobe. "Last I saw Ptolemy, him and his brother Ptolemy owned Egypt. No relation."

"So what you're saying is you were playing with the elephant and not paying attention and the Greeks captured you."

He rocked on his heels and did that cute thing with his fingers and his hair and Donna thought even Ptolemy the Greater couldn't be as cute as Doctor the Tenner. No, that didn't sound right. Doctor the Tenbody? Doctor the Teninch? That'd do nicely. She grinned. "When you were visiting your friends, did you strip and indulge yourself in any naked games?"

"Donna Noble! What kind of question is that?"

"As a VIP and general of the Hasmonean army I have the right to review the body of troops under my command."

"You want to review my body now?"

"Since you insist." She batted her eyelashes.

"We- _ell_ … all right. You know, Donna Noble, as long as we're in Jerusalem, we really should explore the Temple Mount."

He knew the moment he said it that it was the wrong thing to say. He saw it coming but was laughing too hard at the look on Donna's face to duck out of the way.

~~

"Donna, how can I put my tongue down your throat if you if you keep giggling?"

"I was just thinking."

"Don't think, just keep doing what you're doing. We can't stay in the vortex forever, much as I'd like—oh, yes! That. Keep doing that."

Donna nodded and kept doing that. After a few minutes, the Doctor rolled onto his side, hooked his leg over one of hers to make a space for himself, and settled in between her thighs. As he dragged his body up hers to nibble along her throat and chin, the Doctor's testicular ring slipped between Donna's folds. Her nerve endings began to sing, the coil of pleasure grew stronger, and she felt his phallus grow and thicken. She loved this part of shagging the Doctor, when it was all just starting and he was telling her with his actions _Look, I'm an alien; I'm nothing nowhere like you. But I trust you with everything I am._

"First, Was saying… oooh, what was I saying?" The Doctor chuckled around her nipple and Donna wondered why she really should care. Wasn't it better if she just let him… oh, better: that was it, him telling her, her understanding, it made her a more knowledgeable and better person "Doctor, the miracle of Hanukkah that's celebrated in my time…"

"The one _you_ lit, Donna Noble, the one the rabbis downplayed for centuries so that kings and tyrants wouldn't fear an uprising and kill all the Jews to make sure it didn't happen to them. The miracle that a small ragtag untrained group of freedom fighters would take down the big bad. That was your miracle, Donna Noble. You made it happen."

"Not that miracle, Spaceman, the one they sing about, the candles… look, you can embellish the hickey later. Tell me what really happened at the Temple when the Maccabees won it back."

"The Maccabees fought many battles against their oppressor." He sighed sadly. "Good people died… people who believed freedom and equal justice are things worth fighting and dying for. They won back their freedom and their country. They retook the Temple, and went inside to clean and re-sanctify it and light the vessels of sacred oil that burned day and night as long as the Jews were free. But they found only one vessel that hadn't been spoiled by the Greeks."

"And it contained oil enough to burn for just one day, which didn't give them enough time to make more sacred oil; to do it right, the way the High Priest was supposed to."

"Yeah, Donna, they needed eight—"

"Yeah, eight! And then, miracle of miracles, that small, insignificant, meagre, tiny, barely worth the effort…"

The Doctor made a face and rolled off his lover. "I'm going to hate this, I know."

"Like the Energizer Bunny it kept going and going and going. 'Least that's the story. Did it?"

The Doctor kissed Donna's shoulder. "The oil was produced and measured carefully. The priests knew exactly how much would burn for how long. The sacred vessels were big enough to hold exactly enough oil to burn from sunset to sunset… one day each vessel, a twenty-four-hour supply. But the single usable vessel they found burned for eight days."

"Because like you, it's bigger on the inside." She snorted and slugged his arm.

"I knew I was going to hate this... Donna, stop giggling."

When she didn't stop, he pinched her nipple and snogged her breathless. Donna wrapped a leg around the Doctor's hip, rolled on top of him. She ground against him as she bit his nipple doing something with her fingernails along the perimeter of his testicular ring. His eyes rolled back in his head and he would have screamed his pleasure but his respiratory bypass hadn't kicked in yet.

Donna grinned at the Doctor, very proud of herself. "Howya doin TARDIS boy?"

"Oi! You promised not to call me that again."

"I know, but it's more descriptive than "Doctor the Greater" and much better than Doctor the Lesser—"

"Obviously you've put a lot of thought into this."

"—or maybe, I mean this is your tenth face, yeah? I'll call you Doctor the Tenser."

"How do you plan to keep me tense all the time, Donna?"

She smirked. He tweaked something very sensitive. "Ooh! Or—" She succeeded admirably in keeping a straight face. "I'll call you Doctor the Teninch?"

"Not when I am overthrowing tyrannical regimes, saving the universe, or anywhere public."

"How about Miracle Grow?"

"Isn't that a plant food?"

 ~

 

 

Afterward: Shoo Shoo Shushan

  

The TARDIS doors opened and the Doctor strolled out. He looked around wondrously; one of his great joys, in his long ups-and-downs life was the moment of revelation when he stepped out of the TARDIS and discovered where his next adventure would begin.

Donna stepped out a bit more cautiously. She looked around, sniffed the air then tasted it, cocked her head and listened for a good ten seconds. The Doctor couldn't figure what she was listening to; his superior Time Lord hearing detected nothing.

With a puzzled little frown he watched Donna pull from her pocket a little book no larger than her palm, and begin to thumb through it. He walked back to her and hovered over her shoulder. Donna shouldered herself away from him. Well, Donna Noble could turn her back to him and his absolutely justified curiosity, but she couldn't hide from his height and superior Time Lord eyesight! As the Doctor watched, words began appearing on a blank page… sentences and paragraphs appeared on the page in Lucida Grande font. "Hmmm," Donna said and turned the page. More sentences wrote themselves into the book, filling the blank pages.

"Donna, what's this about?"

Her nose in the little book, Donna ignored him.

"Donna Noble, what's the book?"

"It's a guide for a walking-tour. Nosy."

"A tour guide?"

"And a current events calendar."

"Current events?" He tried to see. She turned away again. "What's this about?" He asked again.

Preoccupied with reading through the book, Donna paid the Doctor scant attention. She came upon something in her reading that startled her, read it again, shook her head and rolled her eyes. She glared at the Doctor and closed the book.

"Spaceman, I got tired of you landing me places and disappearing, getting me in trouble, or more often getting yourself in trouble and leaving me to clean up your mess. Don't think I don't know what you've been doing, Brainiac," she said, poking him in the chest for emphasis, "and don't bother to give me that innocent _Little Time Lord Los_ t look; it won't work. I know you've been intentionally dumping me into messy historic situations that con me into shoring up your precious time lines. But I'm tired of doing your dirty work, Doctor. The least you could do is tell me and give me the choice.

"So every time we land somewhere, the TARDIS is going to give me a tailor-made, accurate - " (she raised her eyebrows to that and the Doctor had the good grace to look guilty),  " - and detailed _Concise History of the Planet As It Is and As It Should Be_ , with all the salient information I need to cope: current events and politics; fashion trends and faux pas; peaking fads and what they could lead to; dominant, suppressed, and subversive religious practices; which underground freedom fighters are as likely to kill us as the bad guys; what not to say to the ruler's wife, mother-in-law, or house-trained sentient silicate; prison locations and specs; preferred modes of torture…."

"All that? In _there_?"

"It's bigger on the inside," Donna said breezily. "It even has a permanent section on places the TARDIS won't take you."  Donna turned to the back pages and read aloud: "Severnd-Arden 4 in any time period… the ringed moon of Nichols in May…  San Francisco in 1836 or '38, 1906, 1989, 2017 or '18, 2114… it goes on; makes one wonder, whose fault is the fault?"

The Doctor scratched at the back of his neck and admitted nothing.

"There's a bunch in France… 1431 Rouen… the Theatre de Champs-Elysees on May 29, 1913… Oh, look: you're barred from both Paris and Versailles from December 29, 1721 through April 15, 1764 but there's nothing else on the page about it. What happens?"

"Not a clue." The Doctor glared at the TARDIS. It was just a tiny glare, however; he didn't want to find himself marooned somewhere nasty.

"I know we're on Earth, 4th century BCE and this is Shushan, Persia. According to the TARDIS's walking guide, you want me to help you overthrow Haman, the evil Prime Minister who wants to kill King Ahasuerus the Gullible and Horny and his supporters and take over the country, don't you? I don't know if we've arrived for the Victoria's Secret rave and you want me talk Vashti into keeping her shirt on; or if the gallows have been built, the Jews are teetering on the edge of extinction, and Queen Esther, the only one who can save them, has cold feet about stripping in front of Ahasuerus and Haman and heating up the King's blood so high that Haman gets burned. Either way, I have the feeling that what you want will end me up starkers."

"Donna Noble, I always want to end you up starkers." Misdirection was in order; Donna slapped harder than Jackie Tyler. Of course it wasn't completely misdirection if you also meant it. "You are a gorgeous woman, a vision of sensuality, an erotic dream made real, a goddess, a—"

"Cut the bull, Spaceman."

The Doctor tried another tactic. "But Donna, both those women are strong, important heroines, crucial to the progress of the civil rights for minorities and women's rights. You're a perfect example of an intelligent, free-thinking liberated woman— Donna Noble, don't you want to be a role model and the impetus to the downtrodden women of ancient Earth to rise up and be all they can be? Your world needs you! This time line needs you."

Donna glared at him. "You just want to make sure there will be plenty of hamantaschen in the future to stuff in your face."

The Doctor threw Donna against the side of the TARDIS. She wasn't expecting it; neither was the Time Ship; both squealed.

Donna found herself immobilized, trapped between the firm hard wall of the time ship and the ... well, the firm hard time Lord.

"Donna Noble," the Doctor purred darkly, "hamantaschen are delicious, yeah, but that's not what I'm interested in stuffing in." He kissed his lover so hard the bicycle pump on the TARDIS console rattled. Donna's fingers slipped into his hair, scratching lightly. As he deepened the kiss, the pressure of her nails into his scalp intensified, and they both moaned.

Long cool fingers closed around one of Donna's breasts, fully encasing it; kneading it firmly and forcing a gasp from the woman. Moving to the centre of the soft mound, the Doctor found Donna's nipple already stiff; he greeted it with a loving and altogether naughty squeeze. Donna moaned into his mouth and he took the opportunity to stuff his tongue inside. With one last passion-filled kiss to lips that had a starring role in his dreams, his fantasies, and his life, his mouth moved down to kiss and nibble Donna's jaw, her long silken throat. His lips and teeth followed the well-travelled path over her clavicles and down her breastbone. He nipped at one nipple, then the other. As the Doctor's mouth tormented and thrilled Donna through the thin layers of cotton and silk, his hands caressed her, breasts to hips, exploring the beloved body as thoroughly as their position and clothing, and the public square allowed. His feet crept between hers, and a knee pressed up between her thighs.

Donna's legs slipped open to welcome her lover's. She felt his hands on her bum, smoothly and very effectively groping her. Gallifreyans don't grope, she remembered he'd once said. Yeah. Sure.

Donna opened her mouth to lob a beautifully, brilliantly Donna Noble snark at him. The Doctor quickly gave Donna's bum a pinch to cut it off, shut her up, misdirect her, keep her off balance, and squeeze a large section of her silky soft bottom within the span of his hand. Then he raised her up onto one of his thighs, trapping her marvellously between the TARDIS and his firm, hardening mass.

Donna sighed contentedly as the Doctor completed his grope and began rubbing over her excruciatingly sensitive-in-the-best-way bits. Her hand slipped down his pinstripes, grasped and caressed his testicular ring. When she felt him thickening nicely and his member beginning to grow and rise, she wrapped a leg over his bum, locking him to her. With a little effort and some finesse that made the Doctor gasp and Donna snicker, she got his fly open. Her fingers slipped inside, and in mere seconds the Doctor was groaning and rocking against her with little grunts and groans, uncontrolled instinctive thrusts of his hips, and the full attention of his member.

It was surprising and brilliant the regularity with which Donna Noble's touch could make him dizzy! "Oh Donna Noble, what you do to me," he gasped, echoing words he'd said the night that with the help of two kegs of Guinness, they finally cut the snarking foreplay and became lovers. "You don't know…"

"You daft spaceman! Of course I do."

 

~~

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the [BWR Seasonal ficathon](http://bad-wolf-rising.livejournal.com/1173861.html)) The picture prompt is
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